


To Have A Soul

by unlace



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 16:40:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18898558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unlace/pseuds/unlace
Summary: Tumblr ficlets for Season 8.Missandei (8.04)Jon/Daenerys (8.05)





	1. Missandei (8.04)

**Author's Note:**

> “Everything seems to have a soul – wood, stones, the wine we drink and the earth we tread on. Everything, do you hear me, absolutely everything.”
> 
> — Nikos Kazantzakis, "Zorba the Greek"

These Westerosi skies are a curious shade of blue. A flat blue, Missandei thinks. Indifferent and dreary. Almost forbidding in its vastness. Even so, it is a small comfort that she does not have to squint to see her love, Grey Worm, and her queen, Daenerys. Both of them her dearest friends. And it is a small comfort that Missandei need not shade her eyes to see them; after all her wrists are chained together, so how could manage.

Missandei dislikes this flatness.

Unlike the leap of her heart that fateful day in Astapor, astride a horse and leaving that city forever. Unlike that fateful day when, for the first time in half a lifetime, the skies turned jewel-bright in Missandei’s eyes once more. The smoke and the dust and the Good Masters’ screams were still settling, but the skies were drenched with a different sort of sunlight. Missandei remembers shading her eyes to squint and smile at it, the sweat warm on her forehead, the breeze gentle on her wrists and nape, her eyes wet.

Unlike slow evenings with Grey Worm, eating iced fruits and black rice together. Tasting laughter on each other’s tongues. Mouthing desire on each other’s skins, the kisses sometimes gentle, sometimes rough and hungry, but always warm. Always leaping with life.

Unlike quiet mornings with Daenerys, drinking tart persimmon wine and chatting of home. Distant homes which loomed large in their minds. Tethers to selves. Homes which seemed almost strange to think about in a sober state now, not unlike castles and manses in songs.

Unlike the days and the nights when Missandei would kiss each of Grey Worm’s fingers whilst telling him “I love you” in all the languages she knows. And the ten fingers might come up short against nine-and-ten tongues, but Grey Worm’s callused fingers have made a lot of things known to her: sturdiness, love, joy, gentleness, respect, trust, hope.

Unlike the days and the nights when Missandei shared counsel with Daenerys, even giving her some lessons on languages and customs. Missandei enjoyed having a pupil who is determined to learn what she has set her mind on. That humility and perseverance. And finally that spark of understanding.

Once Missandei told her friend and queen that she is not that afraid of fire.

_(Why is that?)_

“If you have any last words,” her captor’s voice suddenly breaks through, “now is the time.”

Missandei looks at Grey Worm, a tender ache in her chest for her love whom she will leave behind. She pities and she grieves his imminent grief. _(Fire gives life, Your Grace. It is said that the earliest known men gathered around cookfires for warmth and companionship, for cooked food which aided our stomachs and strengthened our brains, for protection against beasts. Fire helped us survive long enough for civilisations to be born. Fire nourishes.)_

Then Missandei shifts her gaze to Daenerys. She knows that this has not been the homecoming her queen dreamed of in kinder dreams. This is certainly not Missandei’s home, this land of a vast blueness which is flat, indifferent, and forbidding. _(And just as fire nourishes, Your Grace, it also destroys. Fire gives warmth but it also burns. Just like man. The two sides of humanity.)_

Missandei pauses, her mind made up.

The chains are heavy around her wrists, heavy and foreign on top of her woollens. Her sweat is cold. Her heart pumps wildly, warmly. Then Missandei fills up her lungs with this cold flat-blue air, fills up her lungs until it feels like burning, and shouts out her last word.

*


	2. Jon/Dany (8.05)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set in 8.05, the eve of the Battle in King's Landing.

She.

 _She_ , Jon thinks. Daenerys.

She is brooding. Pale knuckled, gripping the Dragonstone throne with one hand, her other fist clenching and unclenching on her lap. Crumpling the black silk of her skirts. The candelabras hiss and snatch sulky gleams on her wine-dark sleeves, on the shadows smudged beneath her eyes, on the dregs of a snarl. She has asked to be left alone after dismissing Lord Tyrion for the night, the eve of their siege. She has asked to be left alone.

“Come closer,” she tells Jon.

He steps away from the shadows, and meets her eyes. The seething pools from the candelabras, reflected. Two pits of fire stare back at him.

His queen. Daenerys.

Dare he think of her as anything more, to him, right now? More than a beloved queen?

Once, he did. After a cold dead grip had released him to a blazing red brazier, with gaping stab wounds and gasping lungfuls of air until it burned. Until he realised he still had hope for the living. For life itself. Alarmingly single-minded as he was to keep the hope burning, as though the world had magnified yet shrunken at the same time, he still did, once. The world had tunnelled, but one day Jon tossed a glance at Daenerys regarding him - and glanced again. He saw that she mistrusted him. He also saw that she was still willing to extend a hand, to take a leap with him. He did, once, loved her as a woman. The world had tunnelled, and he was far from Winterfell and the North, adrift in his almost strange and crumpled soul, but for a single purpose. But along the way Daenerys’ hand proved to be warm, her grip callused and firm, her unguarded smile dipped in softness, her eyes aglow with the promise of what might be beyond the tunnel. Her own sort of homesickness spoke to him. Jon remembers admiring her in the winter sunlight, stooped down and running her hand on sand, pebbles, grass, on the soil of Westeros, a look on her face that was at once reverent and hungry.

Now she sits half in shadow. Quite still but for her hands. Quite alone.

Jon takes another step.

Daenerys stirs. She looks down the distance from the raised throne, her silks rasping, her nostrils slightly flaring.

Is he afraid? He can be brave. He knew her, once.

Jon takes a third step. And a fourth, and one more, eyes never leaving hers. Until he’s halfway up to Daenerys. Until she’s only half alone. Then he stands in front of her with his palms open and his back straight.

The dregs of Daenerys’ snarl fully melts away. Her silks give a faint sigh.

“Do you remember?” Her voice is rather hoarse. “This is where we first met.”

Jon remembers. He remembers frustration and urgency. The world was a tunnel, with hot shadows pressing around him.

But he extends a hand now. He takes a leap of faith. “Do you remember,” he asks Daenerys, “what we both felt at first, in that boat from the Wall? What brought us together?”

“Heartsick. We were heartsick.” Daenerys swallows. Her gaze roves all over his face, slowly, intensely, almost a farewell. “But we spoke of an afterwards. Perhaps. A dream. Didn't we? But we spoke of it, you and I.”

Once, he did.

Once?

No.

Still. Still.

Jon does, still. Gods help him.

The mark of the dragon is on her, the mark of a beast. And Jon thinks of the red priestess’ brazier, of mute howls and a bloody muzzle and a gloating moon through the snowy ironwood, and of the tunnelled world of hot shadows. _And the mark of the beast is on me as well._

Night presses in. Jon can hear it billowing outside. The pools on the candelabras seethe, but in Dany’s eyes it has gentled into a glow. She is still looking at him with the face of half a stranger, seated half in shadows, but Jon knows they’re both heartsick again.

“I’d love to speak of it again,” Jon dares, “afterwards. Afterwards.”

Dany’s lips twist. In a whisper of silks, she unclenches the fist on her lap altogether. And she nods. “After the siege.”

For now, it is enough.

*


End file.
